It was almost practically an honest-to-Godfact… All the older cool guys confirmed it,and we could all recite those well-knownanecdotes seething with that rebel-without-

a-cause wildness, that same walk-on-the-wild-side jazz we’d seek out in thosebreathless teen-angst movies likeJoy Ride... and Party Crashers:

“A single aspirin swigged down with a mouthful of Coca-Cola will render you staggeringly, knocked-on-your-ass drunk.”

One medicine show demonstration: anormally “sober” and “respectable”older kid rapidly developing outrageouslyslurred speech patterns & flopping with histrionic helplessness on the playgroundlawn where he was reduced to a giggling,gravity-pinned, dying cockroach impaledon its back: proof-positive!

So later, in the sanctuary of my room, after surreptitiously gulping down the deliciously-illicit white pill with a glassof Coke (which, as anyone could tell you,

can completely dissolve a steel spike leftin it over night!) and waiting over an hourfor the magic… Nothing... happened!

Man, was I was ticked off! It was justlike that time I swallowed the choke-cherries and drank the glass of milk,which everybody swore would kill you...

but it never did. It just tasted bad.I didn’t even get sick! I thought,face it: There’s no magic in this world--Only lies.